barack obama is the candidate in 2008. said of the constitution it has worked pretty well for 200 years. among others things the complaisant assurance by the first african-american president requires overlooking a brutal civil war that lasted four years and killed 750,000 people. a war that i am sure many of you experience as having occurred between semesters, when the first semester of american history that you might have taken concluded in 1860 and picked up again perhaps in 1868 or 1877. this is the way american constitutional law is tops. it appears by magic in constitutional courses with literally almost no time spent on how we got either the thirteenth or the fourteenth amendment which is much closer to chairman mao's notion that howard including constitutional power grows out of the barrel of a gun than it could be understood simply in the model of the 1787 constitution that would suggest any amendments would come through a nice, calm and peaceful article 5 process where we deliberate on what would make us better an